


the whole goddamn sky

by YourPalYourBuddy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix It, M/M, NOT endgame compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Snapshots, Time Travel, tho technically they opened a multiverse so this COULD be accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 18:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19011865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourPalYourBuddy/pseuds/YourPalYourBuddy
Summary: “He loved you too, you know,” Sam says. Bucky wonders when it was they started talking about Steve like he’s stuck in the past. “He got so happy each time we got to Wakanda. You know that look he gets when he’s unsure he can actually hold onto things he wants.” Bucky nods. “It was that the whole way there. Like you gave him the goddamn sky.”Bucky looks down at his name in Steve’s careful handwriting and wonders what it means if he feels his whole goddamn sky is shattered into pieces around him.He says, “He still left,” and Sam bows his head, his fingers sweeping over the drawings Natasha had packed away._____________________Stucky in an Endgame ending where Steve gets stuck in the past. Bucky's POV.





	the whole goddamn sky

________________________

 

Bruce says it’ll take five seconds. It doesn’t.

Bucky kind of knew it was going to happen. Steve’s never been good at standing on the sideline, and it was inevitable, really. He feels this most strongly in the space between second four and five.

They count past five and wait and Bruce mumbles while Sam hovers anxiously and Bucky closes his eyes because he fucking knew it, he did, he called it a mile away. _You’re taking all the stupid with you,_ he’d said. He _knew_ it.

“He’s not coming back,” Bucky says, before clearing his throat and saying it louder so they’ll hear him. Sam and Bruce freeze, stare at him. Bucky shrugs and tries not to feel helpless. “He always gets this look when he’s about to do something like this.”

“Something like fuck up the entire time-space continuum?” Sam asks. He isn’t really looking for an answer, so Bucky doesn’t give him one.

Bruce mumbles, “Gonna try and adjust the signal,” but it’s pointless. Bucky stares at Sam until Sam looks at him, shaking his head, and there’s too much pain in Sam’s eyes. He looks like he just got abandoned. Bucky knows how he feels. He’s almost positive he looks the same.

It doesn’t matter now. Steve’s gonna do what he’s gonna do.

He focuses on swallowing around this new lump in his throat.

“Come on,” Bucky says, and he and Sam walk into the house.

____________

 

There are a few things they’re needed for. Press meetings. Debriefings with Maria, Fury, Bruce, T’Challa, and Carol when everyone is free. Conferences with the United Nations; Bucky likes this the least, almost all the delegates are a mix between combative and grateful, mostly the former, and he hasn’t forgotten most of them wanted him killed. He still doesn’t blame them for that exactly — they didn’t know the whole story, almost no one did — but it’s the kind of thing that lingers.

Sam is unofficially the Avengers’ spokesman and it makes sense, considering everything. He’s decorated, earnest, and won’t take shit. That combined with the fact of Tony, Natasha, the fact that T’Challa has his own country to govern and Carol’s checking in on the entire galaxy, and with Steve fucked off to who knows when, and then Bucky with his _history_ and how much he despises public speaking even if he hadn’t been a shoot on sight case, it makes sense.

In their hotel room, Sam mutters “Fuck off” under his breath after one particularly grueling conference. He glances at Bucky. “Not you. They’re in my head, they don’t know _anything,_ how many times do I have to say ‘No, we aren’t sure where Steve Rogers is, or if Natasha or Stark are coming back’ before they leave me the hell alone?”

“At least once more,” Bucky says, kicking his shoes off.

“Fuck off,” Sam sighs. It loses most of its sting. “You can take over any time you want, just say the word.”

Bucky throws a pillow at him and it’s a mark of how tired they both are that Sam just sprawls out on his bed without throwing anything back. That and the fact that the pillow hit the wall instead of Sam.

“I don’t think the US would like that,” Bucky says bluntly. It’s something he’s thought about since the moment Steve disappeared. It doesn’t make saying it any less painful. “Most people don’t like brainwashed Hydra agents. ‘Specially not when they look as good as me.”

Sam cracks a smile at that. “I’m taking it back now, you don’t need the ego boost. Won’t be able to fit in the jet.”

Sam’s voice breaks when he mentions the jet. Bucky doesn’t reply other a quiet, “Good night, Wilson,” and Sam’s already snoring when Bucky turns out the lights.

____________

 

There are a few things they aren’t needed for. In the empty spaces, Bucky goes for walks around Brooklyn. He’s looking for — something. Anything. Time travel doesn’t make sense to him, not really, but it makes more sense than believing Steve wouldn’t come back.

“If you have all the time you need,” Bucky says, looking at a building he vaguely recognizes, “why aren’t you back? Why bother saying you would when—?”

Some fuzzy memory surfaces when he stares at the rooftop of the building, some noise sounds when he looks at the door, some phantom imprint of the walls under his hands when he considers how familiar the bricks look. He crosses the street, looking up. Whatever memory he was following implodes when he touches the building.

He wants to cry over that. He almost does. Later, holding himself together on another hotel couch, he lets himself.

____________

 

Bucky leaves Brooklyn. It feels haunted. Like he’s experiencing it through fogged glass. It’s familiar and shadowed at both turns.

____________

 

He meets Sam in D.C. twenty days after Steve disappeared and he’s hoping for good news, or at least news that Sam is sleeping and getting good food, but neither Bruce nor Sam know what buttons to press on the stove. Carryout containers in both of their cars. In Sam’s house, Bruce talks shop in his sleep and Bucky amuses himself by asking about Pluto before Sam pokes him.

“He left some of his stuff here when we went on the run,” he says. “So did Nat. Never got around to moving it.”

“A giant purple alien trying to destroy the universe does tend to get in the way of things,” Bucky says mildly.

He follows Sam through the hallway to what he thinks is a guest room; Steve and Natasha used to bring up their guardian angel enough times he’s sort of accidentally memorized the layout of his house. Sam wiggles the handle — it’s stuck, so he needs to put his shoulder against the door for leverage — and it opens onto a mess of boxes, books, and clothes.

Bucky’s crying before he realizes. It smells like Steve, like he did back when the only problems they had to handle were a fucked up serum in Bucky’s bloodstream and an evil man who could peel his face off. It smells like the moment Steve burst into the operating room and found him and smells like how relieved Bucky was, afterward, that they hadn’t gotten the same dose. There’s a hint of simplicity here. It’s hard to believe it was ever that simple.

Sam hands him a tissue without commenting. Bucky takes it without saying thank you. There’s a moment where they’re quiet together.

He is trying so hard not to be bitter. He had a lifetime of it frozen and scorched and seared into his skin. Standing with Sam in the doorway of this room, two men left behind and looking at what else Steve Rogers left behind, it’s hard not to feel it. That his best guy up and left them without a word like that.

Bucky shakes his head and turns and all but runs back down the hallway. Anything to get away from Steve boxed up in a dusty room.

____________

 

He goes to more debriefings and strategy meetings. Most of the time Sam’s there too, and when he is they play tic tac toe with a notebook they pass back and forth across the table. Fury comments a few times, but each time Bucky says “Have you gotten him back yet?” and Fury shakes his head. Eventually he stops saying anything.

When Sam isn’t there Bucky writes down random shit. Sometimes it’s what Fury’s talking about; he does care about working on defense systems and whatnot, but he’s always been more of a backseat, “don’t blink or you’ll miss your target” kind of soldier. Somewhere between out in the open and a spy. He doesn’t like to be too front and center anymore.

Most of the time it’s stuff he would’ve said to Steve instead. _When are you coming back. When did you decide to do this. How can you leave like that. Didn’t you know I’m gonna miss you._ All the things he knows wouldn’t have made a difference; he knows how Steve gets when he wants to solve things. The space between his eyebrows wrinkles so much it’s like someone scrunched up wrapping paper and pretended it fit there on his face. He’d looked just like that when he’d stepped back onto the plate.

Bucky crosses it out at the end of every meeting. It doesn’t do any good to think like this. It just hurts more.

He tries not to think about the stack of boxes piled up in that guest room. Objectively he should help Sam with it at some point, and he will, but Sam hasn’t asked yet. Bucky’s happy enough leaving it be.

____________

 

The seasons change. It’s been fifty days now. Bucky has started thinking of ways to convince Sam to take the mantle. Not thorough plans yet, just ideas. Things like _you’d be better at it than I would_ would work if they weren’t talking about something as serious as this. He wonders if saying he needs to rest would be convincing. It makes him feel selfish, very un-Cap like; Steve never rested. Even now he’s not resting, Bucky can tell. He wonders if he’d be happier if Steve had gone back in time to rest.

 _Think of the kids,_ but that turns him from a person into an icon. Even if it’s true. _Imagine how good you’ll be able to fight with winds and a shield that makes no mathematical sense._ Or, _Fury likes you more than me anyway._ Or, _please._

“Hey,” Bucky says on the phone one night. He’s been staying in a hotel near Jersey and he hates it objectively.

Sam says, “What’s up?”

“Been thinking about him a lot lately,” Bucky says. He takes a breath, aiming for resolve. “About what he’d want, moving forward.”

“You mean, forward from—?”

He ends up just saying it. “I think you should take up the shield.” Sam is quiet on the other end. Bucky can’t tell if it’s a good kind of quiet. “You’re already doing everything he did, you’re already better with the public than anyone else has been, you’re trending on Twitter like. All the time.”

“Who taught you how to use Twitter?” Sam asks. Bucky can’t read his tone; it feels caught between an exhale and cautious agreement.

Bucky says, “Hill and Banner,” and Sam laughs a little. He continues a little softer. “I can’t be in motion like this anymore, not without — and you deserve it. You really do. You’re noble and strong and don’t take shit. That’s the Cap we need right now.”

“If you’re sure,” Sam says slowly. “If you’re sure I won’t fuck this up.”

“Wouldn’t say that, this is you we’re talking about.”

“Fuck off, Barnes.”

Bucky’s next words are quiet. “Yeah. You won’t fuck this up. It might be some growing pains, but. You’ll be stronger for it.”

“How’d you like to come on as my pep coach?” Sam asks, only sounding somewhat joking, and they laugh and talk around whether Steve’s ever coming back.

Bucky feels good about this. It’s easier to be optimistic in this world: governments are stabilizing, slow but surely; birds and butterflies and bees wing their way around just past his window; people still run up and down the hallway in hotels. Even with Steve gone, things have to keep moving. They’ve been without Captain America long enough.

____________

 

He stands in the back with Maria at the press conference, smiling. For the first time in months it doesn’t feel forced. Sam answers questions confidently, shoulders back and straight like a hero, and it’s like taking a deep breath after particularly shitty day. Feels like something’s snapped back into place.

Sam says, “I promise, to all citizens of the world, to do my best to protect this planet as your Captain America,” and a flash flood of camera shutters snap off.

“You come up with that off the top of your head?” Bucky murmurs through a smile. Sam subtly flips him off behind his back. Bucky stifles a laugh.

____________

 

Steve’s boxes are mostly notebooks. Bucky handles them carefully, touch light, as if they’re radioactive, as if they’d crumble in his hands. He has a box labeled MUSEUM and one labeled STEVE WTF IS THIS and another, print small, with the words _(don’t give away)_ written on the side. This last box is the fullest. It’s hard to let go of him.

So he doesn’t. Bucky gives in this once and reads out sections of Steve’s journals to make Sam laugh and to kickstart his own memory and if he falters over reading his own name, Sam is kind enough not to say anything.

His name comes up a lot. _Bucky I told you I had him on the ropes. When’d you come back last night, Buck, you smell like smoke and perfume. Hey Bucky just wait until you hear what I did, you’re gonna love it, free breakfast from Mrs. O’Flanagan for the entire week. Bucky you look so soft when you don’t think anyone can see you._

His tongue trips over this last one the most. Sam glances at him from where he’s going through a pile of Natasha’s drawings. One looks like it’s of him.

“You love him.”

It isn’t a question. It isn’t past tense.

Bucky looks at Sam and lets him read it in his face, in the way he’s holding these notebooks. Sam nods once like it makes sense and Bucky wants to ask why Steve left when once he wrote things like that and instead his voice gets lost in his throat.

“He loved you too, you know,” Sam says, and this time the past tense hurts like getting shot in the shoulder. He wonders when it was they started talking about Steve like he’s stuck in the past. “Every time we were gone before the, you know. Thanos and shit. He got so happy each time we got to Wakanda. You know that look he gets when he’s unsure he can actually hold onto things he wants.” Bucky nods. “It was that the whole way there. Like you gave him the goddamn sky.”

Bucky looks down at his name in Steve’s careful handwriting and wonders what it means if he feels his whole goddamn sky is shattered into pieces around him.

He says, “He still left,” and Sam bows his head, his fingers sweeping over the drawings Natasha had packed away.

____________

 

Bruce keeps them updated. “His signature spiked the other day,” he says via text. Or: “I lost him but don’t worry, I’m working on it.” Or: “what d’you think of these jeans?”

“They’re great,” Sam sends back, angling the screen so Bucky can read over his shoulder. “Right? I like them anyway.”

Bucky says, “Tell him his cutoffs were a look,” and Sam snorts and types it out.

____________

 

Half a year since. Bucky watches the sunrise from the roof of Sam’s house, hugging his knees to his chest. There’s a brief, burning moment where he almost speaks like he’s talking to Steve, like somehow his voice would carry into whenever he is and Steve would hear him and things would be okay. He imagines the taste of those words on his tongue, closing his eyes. He doesn’t say anything.

____________

 

Forty weeks after, Bucky wakes up to Sam shaking his shoulder and for a wild moment he thinks he’s going to say something about Bruce’s wardrobe again.

“Hey,” Sam says, his voice uncharacteristically soft and worried. “Hey, we gotta go.”

Bucky swings out of bed so fast Sam startles backward, tripping over an old sweatshirt Bucky squirreled out of Steve’s boxes. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve gotta show you Bruce something,” Sam says urgently. Bucky tenses with both hands on his shoelaces.

Sam answers the unasked question. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s Steve.”

Bucky flips through one of Steve’s journals from 1943 on the drive over. He doesn’t see it, at first; it looks exactly like the others, little notes about what he’s been up to, some exchange Morita and Dugan had about the beans, small sketches of all their faces in the margins. There’s one of him cleaning his rifle with an expression Bucky doesn’t like to see on his face. He doesn’t linger on it.

“What am I looking for?” Bucky asks, as they pull in front of Bruce’s lab.

Sam glances at him from the driver’s seat. “You’ll know.”

Bucky flips back and forth as they all but run through the building, counting on Sam to stop him from crashing into the walls. Frustration rises in his throat — he knows Steve, supposed to know him better than anyone, why can’t he—?

Then he finds it and it’s like running into a pole.

It says this: _Second chance. See you soon._

____________

 

“Thought he wasn’t supposed to be able to change the present,” Bucky says numbly, crossing his arms to keep from diving onto the time travel plate and sending himself in after Steve.

He watches Bruce as he sprints across his lab opening drawers and throwing papers around and he’s vaguely aware of his own heart rate increasing, but it’s like they’re in two different rooms. This is so past his scientific grasp that he can’t do anything but try to control his breathing.

“Must be something with the particles,” Bruce says frantically. “Or — maybe changed something major, I don’t — when’s that dated?”

He doesn’t have to look. “March seventh.”

Bruce looks up sharply. “After the—?” Sam nods, mouth drawn in a thin line. “After the plane?”

“What does that mean,” Bucky says. It’s a plea and a question mixed as one. “How’s he writing to us now, that’s not supposed to happen. Or— is it to us? Or is it a new branch of time?”

They gather around the notebook in a frantic, pajama-ful half circle. Bucky looks at Bruce anxiously, but Bruce just says, “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“This can’t just happen without a reason,” Sam says, voice strained. “What happens if he’s stuck in the past?”

Bucky realizes before Bruce says it. “He keeps aging,” Bucky says slowly. Saying it feels like cracking something in his chest, but he keeps going regardless. Sometimes the hurt has to come from yourself before anyone else gets the chance to say it. “Right? Time passes normally for him, he can finally have his life with Peggy. A redo.”

“I just don’t believe that anymore,” Sam says. He folds his arms. “He wouldn’t do that. You’ve read his journals, those kinds of feelings — they don’t just go away like that.”

He shakes his head before Sam finishes talking. It hurts too much to consider that, that Steve still loves him but is trapped in the past. It’s so much easier to think he finally found a way to be happy on his own. Otherwise they’re separated by time again, one last ultimate _fuck you_ to the both of them in spite of everything they’ve gone through. He knows without asking that finding Steve in the time stream is impossible. The odds of running into their Steve in another timeline is slim to none, not to mention how much he could mess with the integrity of their return; Steve filled them in on what happened to Lang before he left, Bucky could do that inadvertently to them both.

“I can’t let myself think like that anymore, Sam,” Bucky says. It feels almost like a weight’s both lifting off and crashing down on his shoulders. “I don’t know how to help anyway, I’m not a scientist, I can’t send more particles into the time stream, we don’t have a way to help him with a Plan B even if he decides he wants to be helped.”

He needs to leave before he breaks down in front of them. They wouldn’t judge, he knows that, but it’s be too much like a surrender for him to even think about it.

Sam says his name but there’s a roaring wave in his ear that feels like falling.

“No, I need to go,” he whispers, and turns and runs.

____________

 

He comes back to himself in Sam’s guest room. He picks up one of Steve’s notebooks, hands shaking, and holds it so tight to his knuckles go white.

____________

 

A knock on the door.

“Buck?”

Sam.

Bucky cracks an eyelid, waiting. Sam comes in slow enough that Bucky knows he’d turn around if asked. He doesn’t say anything to stop him. The more rational side of him knows he’s right to have said what he did — there isn’t really much he can do, he doesn’t have Bruce’s knowledge or Sam’s optimism — but embarrassment swells with every step Sam takes.

Sam sits on the bed and seems to take him in, red eyes and tear stains and journal hugged close, and rubs his temples.

“I didn’t mean it,” Bucky says thickly. He coughs, trying to rid the sleep from his voice. “I mean. I knew he was going to do something. But I don’t want to think this is what it was.”

Sam says, “I don’t want to, either,” and Bucky feels the embarrassment in his throat. He sounds so — abandoned, his eyes strained and tired. This whole time, Bucky hadn’t noticed. He fervently promises himself to _look._ “It’s something to consider, but we know Steve. We do. And the Steve I know wouldn’t leave either of us like that, not if it could be helped.”

“Not unless he thought we were better off,” Bucky says, and Sam shrugs in an _yeah true_ kind of way. “He’s always been wrong about that. Never learns.”

“Captain America, more like Captain Always Gonna Sacrifice Myself,” Sam says, snorting. Bucky smiles slightly.

 _Not without you,_ he’d said. He still means it.

It’s impossible to imagine Steve not meaning it too. He’s doing the Captain America thing right now, pushing through his own pain and hurt to check in on Bucky. It’s hard to feel that he deserves this from him.

“Okay,” Bucky says, slow. Sam’s eyes brighten. “What’s the play?”

____________

 

It’s more of a last ditch effort than a real plan. Bucky isn’t optimistic, and the way Sam’s eyebrows crease tell him he feels the same.

“With coma patients,” Bruce says, unspooling a tangle of wires, “it helps sometimes to hear voices of loved ones talking about things, reminders and stuff like that.”

He pieces it together from there. “How’s this going to work?”

Bruce talks about time streams and opening channels matched to Steve’s signature and how theoretical it all is, because of course it is, and goes off on a tangent about how it shouldn’t affect the integrity of time if it’s a focused stream, and Bucky hears him and listens to what he’s saying and focuses on Sam. Sam, who’s in pain and feeling abandoned. Just like him.

“What do you think,” Bucky asks him, while Bruce fiddles with the control panel.

Sam shrugs like he’s trying not to hope too much and failed and doesn’t want to give this a larger weight than it already has. “Worth a try, right?”

So Bucky lifts his arms at Bruce’s prompting and waits, somewhat patiently, while Bruce attaches yards of wires to his brachial artery, his carotid, his temples. For baseline vitals, Bruce tells him. Sam shuffles through a few pages of with their projected outcome with slightly shaking hands. Bucky watches with his heart in his throat.

Bruce taps him to say he’s done and Bucky feels so untethered despite the wires, like if he isn’t careful he could freefall into Time himself while he tries to talk Steve back to them. Back to him. He takes a microphone from Sam, his own hands unsteady, and takes a seat next to the control panel.

“You ready for this?” Sam says quietly.

Bucky says, “Just anything?” and Bruce clears his throat.

“Anything,” Bruce says. He adjusts his glasses and flips open a plastic button cover. “Just anything about the both of you, that should do it.”

Bucky decides not to comment on how nervous he looks, but there’s an air of uncertainty crowding all of them. Something a little close to determined resignation. None of them really know how well this will work, but there’s no better option on the table.

“Okay,” Bucky says. Then, louder: “Let’s do this.”,” and Bruce pushes the button, opening the time stream in front of them like it was an intercom.

The time stream portal opens with a flurry of colored lights that sort of — almost remind him of the snow that day on the train.

Sam gives him a thumbs up.

And Bucky clears his throat and starts talking.

____________

 

He says:

_I don’t know how best to do this. Bruce said something about key phrases, time-anchoring things, anything to give you a sense of where to come back to. I’m hoping my voice is enough. We all know I don’t know a lot of what’s going on at the best of times. I’ll try though. I think we all deserve that, at least one more go of it. I meant it when I said it back then. End of the line, pal._

He says:

_Steve remember that one time Frenchie beat DumDum so bad at cards he was out for the rest of the night? Just sitting around the fire pit looking like he’d been slapped with a fish like that one time Peggy slapped him with a fish. God I wish you’d drawn that. Stunned stupid. That’s probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in my life._

He takes a glass of water from Sam and thanks him and says:

_You should know Sam’s Cap now. I think he’s been Cap his whole life, especially when he’s getting on my goddamn nerves. Maybe it’s a good thing you aren’t here, I finally got my blood pressure to a good place and you’d both wreck it in a second. But you’d be proud of him. You really would._

He says:

_If you’re listening and you’re happy then don’t feel like you need to — to stop being happy, if coming back won’t make you happy then stay, but — we miss you. I miss you. And I think there was a moment, and still is, where I’ve been a little in love with you. And I want you to come back so I can say it to your face. I’m too stubborn to die again without saying it._

In a whisper, he says:

_I want — I want to give you the whole goddamn sky._

____________

 

So they wait.

Bucky starts renting movies online until Maria shows him how to work Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime. He makes a point of finding shows he thinks Sam will want to see, and wakes up early enough to read through the paper op eds so he can hide any “think pieces” on “the politics of a Black Captain America.” He goes on runs around Washington monuments and once, just because, he wades in the reflecting pool to feel the water on his legs. He helps Sam organize Natasha’s drawings into a portfolio and Sam’s voice shakes enough saying “just in case” that Bucky doesn’t press. After bad missions they laugh at YouTube videos comparing Sam’s increasingly annoyed appearances at press conferences to how ecstatic he gets at Washington Capitals games, where Sam _definitely_ doesn’t have preferential treatment. He’s dropped the puck at least eight times.

“You’re prouder of that than the time you stopped that massive arms deal?” Bucky asks one morning, amused.

“They could’ve asked anyone,” Sam says defensively. _“Anyone,_ and they asked me. It means more that way.”

Bruce keeps tracking Steve’s energy spikes. “They’re stronger now,” he says via text. He sends a GIF of a little bunny lifting weights and it takes so much of Bucky’s energy to stop Sam from sending back every lyric to “Little Bunny Foo Foo.”

At night Bucky reads his name in Steve’s handwriting. At night, he hopes his voice made it through, that he got to say he loved him out loud at least once and have Steve hear him. It’s too much to think otherwise. Most things he tries to be realistic about, to imagine every possibility before making a claim on anything. This one he carves out for himself.

____________

 

A year and two weeks. Clouds shining pink and golden. Birds and planes the same size in the distance, winging their way like gravity’s a myth. On Sam’s roof, Bucky tips his head back to follow the skyline up, up, up, until he gets lost in the sunset-painted world the sun left behind.

____________

 

“What do you think he’s doing,” Bucky says through a mouthful of Cheerios.

Sam casts him a withering look, saying, “Cheerios?” as he kicks off his running shoes.

“It’s _your_ pantry, Wilson.”

“It’s _eight at night,_ Barnes.”

They’ve had this conversation before. When they were angrier and slept less they used to lay down on the living room floor and toss out ideas. He ran out of Pym particles. He wanted to see the dinosaurs. He’s taking an art class in Paris. They both know they aren’t true, but. It’s easier, sometimes, to imagine what wouldn’t be instead of what he’s probably doing. Better than nightmares of Steve risking his life.

“Really, though.” Bucky clatters his spoon against the bowl to undercut what he’s saying. “What do you think he’s doing?”

“Probably something stupid and noble,” Sam says. There’s a faint smile in his voice. “You know how he is.”

“Stuck in a time warp like _Groundhog Day,”_ Bucky suggests. “Like Strange that one time.”

Sam pours himself a bowl of cereal and Bucky laughs, sliding off his chair onto the floor. The kitchen tiles are a lot less comfortable than the carpet in the living room, but it’s still soothing. Sam sits across from him, leaning against the refrigerator.

“Climbing up the cliff at Vormir.”

“Fighting the Red Skull at Vormir.”

“Dance off.”

“Finding Nat.”

“Seeing Peggy.”

“Finally watching all the movies I gave him.”

____________

 

A new entry shows up a month after they first opened the time stream and Bucky finds it first this time, watches it show up like that one scene in those wizard movies Sam likes so much. It’s dated the same day as the second Snap.

Bucky reads it alone first and then with Sam the second time and then he makes Sam read it outloud, and then again, because—

“‘I got her,’” Sam reads, his voice breaking. “‘I heard you. See you soon.’”

There’s a long shaky moment where they just look at each other, like Time stretching long and full and deep right here in the kitchen next to that scrambled egg pan soaking in the sink.

“‘See you soon,’ is he — and who’d he — is that supposed to be,” Bucky stammers. “Is that—”

Sam mouths _I got her_ and traces the words with his fingers like he can feel them against his skin. Like he did with her drawings. His mouth trembles.

“You love her,” he says, his voice soft, and Sam wipes his eyes.

It refocuses everything. He hadn’t considered this additional grief on top of everything else.

“It wasn’t as much of a thing,” Sam says quietly. “Mostly when we were on the run after the Accords. Here and there, you know. Blowing off steam at first, and then — something else in the end. But—” He trails off.

Bucky waits a moment, giving Sam space to find the words. Sam sighs, staring at the journal. “Then we got dusted,” Bucky says, his voice soft.

Sam says, “And Nat wasn’t there when we came back.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

It seems too simple a thing to say in light of all of this. Sam smiles at him, a little teary.

“You never know, right?” Sam says, his voice light in a way that makes it heavier. “If he says he got her, he got her. It’s just a waiting game now.”

____________

 

Bucky starts camping out near the time machine, waiting. There’s no way to know this is where they’ll come back, according to Bruce, but it’s as good a spot as any.

“Take an air mattress at least,” Sam says, so Bucky does. It’s a weird sight next to all the science-y technology, but hey. He had to plug it in somewhere.

After the third night he decides he doesn’t like air mattresses much. They’re soft when you check the pressure with your hand, hard on your back when you lay on them, and they make too much noise when you move around to get comfortable.

He’s just about to give up on it when someone says, “They’re the worst, right?”

Bucky opens his mouth to say _tell me about it_ and then looks up. His words die in his throat.

Steve says, “Sam put me on one for a month when my apartment flooded and even with the serum I couldn’t move in the morning after the second week,” and Bucky pulls him down onto the bed with him.

He runs his hands over Steve’s chest, his face, his head, looking and feeling his way into Steve being real, being _now._ Flesh and blood and a beating heart. Wet spots show up on Steve’s shirt before Bucky realizes he’s crying.

“Hey,” Steve says, laughing a little hoarsely. He cradles Bucky’s head in his hands and wipes tears from under his eyes.

Bucky whispers, “You’re here, you’re really here,” and Steve hangs his head.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“No, don’t — I should get Sam,” he says suddenly, trying to push himself off the air mattress while making sure Steve keeps touching him. It’s both very important Steve doesn’t let him go and that Sam get here now.

“Where is he?” another voice says urgently. Natasha crouches into his eyesight as if from nowhere. “Sam. I’ll get him, where is he?”

“He’s — his room,” Bucky says, stunned. She takes off in an instant, calling out for him.

Bucky sits down, hard, on the air mattress and it dips enough to tumble Steve against him. He’s about to apologize when Steve stops him with a finger to his mouth.

“Don’t apologize,” Steve says softly. “I’m the one who should apologize. I meant to tell you beforehand, I didn’t mean to leave you like this, you or Sam, it’s not fair—”

“It wasn’t fair,” Bucky tells him impatiently. He’s past this, he’s had time to dwell and to worry and they’ll talk about it later, they will, but now—

“Sam thinks you’re in love with me.”

Now he needs to say this.

He watches Steve _look_ at him, really look at him. It feels like Steve’s hearing the broadcast again and lining those words up with what he’s seeing in Bucky’s face, as though his love for Steve is written under his skin as clearly as his veins. Sometimes it feels that way. Bucky hopes Steve can see it the same way he saw it in his journals. He’s never been as good with words.

Steve smooths some of Bucky’s hair behind his ear like he’s something precious.

“I’ve been in love with you,” Steve says, slow, “for as long as I’ve known you, Buck. Sometimes it feels like longer.” He sounds like he can’t believe he’s finally saying it. “I’ve meant to tell you this so many times before now.”

In a whisper, Bucky says, “If it’ll make you feel better, you can say it whenever you’d like,” and then he leans forward and kisses him.

____________

 

Steve tastes like something familiar and new all at once. Like the sunrise. Bucky pulls back to tell him this and Steve laughs and teases his lips apart in another kiss.

“I’ll give you the goddamn sky,” Steve whispers. “If this is the only way I can do it, I’ll do it.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Bucky says.

Steve kisses him again like he’s trying to make up for the past year, six weeks of sunrises and sunsets.

____________

 

They talk about it over pizza, Bucky and Steve sitting so close their thighs smush together and Natasha pausing now and then to lean against Sam, his arm around her shoulder. He and Sam catch each other’s eyes every so often and share looks like they can’t believe it’s finally happening. It’s hard to believe they won’t disappear when Bucky blinks. He presses his thigh closer to Steve’s. Steve bumps their shoulders together, a smile at the corner of his mouth.

He tells them about seeing Red Skull at Vormir, brandishing his slice of pizza as he talks. How he’d shown up in time to stop Natasha and Clint from jumping over the edge and nearly punched Red Skull while trying to figure out a way to stop them both from dying.

Steve pauses in the middle of his story, looking at Natasha. There’s a strain of tension in the set of his shoulders. A glob of cheese plops onto his pants.

“Tell them how you did it,” Natasha says quietly. She twines her fingers together with Sam’s like she’s getting strength from him. “Better now than never, right?”

Alarm courses through Bucky’s body with every beat of his heart. Sam’s saying “Steve?” and Bucky _looks_ at Steve like he’s seeing him for the first time. He looks — he looks the same but pinched, somehow. There’s usually an air of vitality to him. A faint golden glow that hangs off him like a heavenly outline.

It isn’t there anymore.

“Steve,” Bucky says, slow. “Did you give up the serum?”

Steve smiles tightly.

Sam leans forward. “Hold on. How does that work? What does that mean?”

“It’s going slow,” Natasha says, when Steve doesn’t say anything. She clears her throat. “Little bits at a time. We aren’t — we aren’t really sure where it’ll stop.”

“All the way down.” Steve picks the cheese off his pants with a napkin. He doesn’t look at anyone. “I talked to Erskine about it the first time around. He didn’t seem to think it’d ever come up.”

Sam whispers something to Natasha and she shakes her head, pulls his arm closer around her shoulders. “Steve, I’m so—”

“Don’t say that to me,” he says, in a burning sort of quiet voice. “I told you then and I’ll say it now, Nat. You mean more to me than some serum.”

“You could die.” Bucky slides his hand into Steve’s at that. He’s feeling a bit lightheaded. Natasha continues, saying, “The serum kept you stable in the ice, Steve, if all those years catch up to you now—”

Steve squeezes his hand. “You asked me once if I’d trust you to save my life. I told you yes. I want — it’s important to me you know it goes both ways. It always will. It’s a small price to pay, Captain America to having you back, Nat, it’s not even a question.”

Natasha’s crying now, biting her lip and nodding. Sam presses a kiss to her shoulder.

“Besides,” Steve says. He nods at Sam with a subtle note of pride in his eyes. “I hear the new guy’s got a good thing going.”

Sam says, “You can’t say shit like that right now, Rogers, I’m emotional,” and Bucky says, “Wait til you hear about all the Capitals games,” and they devolve into the kind of relieving, exhausting laughter that comes when you’ve just been crying until the sun goes all the way down.

____________

 

“She’s right, though,” Bucky whispers later. Steve adjusts the comforter, tucking it beneath their chins. There’s a familiar pressure as Steve slides his hand back up Bucky’s thigh. He cups Steve’s face. “You aren’t scared?”

Steve takes a moment before responding and Bucky uses the time to learn his face again, tracing around his lips, outlining his eyebrows. A small scar from tripping on the fire escape back home cuts his cheek. Bucky kisses it. Both because he can and because he’s afraid of never being able to do it again.

“I am a little,” Steve whispers back. He smooths his hand over Bucky’s thigh again, trailing his fingertips in that way he knows makes Bucky shiver. He smiles slightly when Bucky does. “It was scarier being stuck without you, though. After Thanos all I wanted to fuck off with you to a little apartment in Brooklyn, maybe get a dog. It was scarier being almost there and then being in one spot for so long, trying to get back to you. I didn’t think it would’ve taken as long as it did. Had a lot of pit stops along the way.”

“Apartment, huh? Not a house?”

Steve says, “We both know I don’t have enough to afford Brooklyn realty,” and Bucky smiles.

“I’d live with you anywhere, so long as we can do this,” he says. Steve kisses him before he can properly finish his last word, but he doesn’t mind much. There’re worse ways of being interrupted.

“I’m happy we’re on the same page,” Steve says afterward. He presses their foreheads together. Bucky rubs his hand through Steve’s hair, relishing being this close to him. He can feel Steve’s heartbeat. “I want you to feel like the sky’s yours every day. I want to make you happy.”

Bucky is so, so gone over this man. He says so. Steve kisses him, slow and almost teasingly, and they fall asleep curled up into each other.

____________

 

Steve is a little smaller in the morning, and the morning after, and the morning after. He still climbs onto the roof to watch the sunrise.

There’s more to say, Bucky thinks, watching him shiver some in the moments just before daybreak. Bucky holds him tight, hoping proximity will warm him. He’ll bring a blanket next time.

They’ll have to talk about this. Bruce has ideas to improve Steve’s circulation and immune system in ways they never could’ve hoped for a hundred years or so ago, but then Bucky probably shouldn’t be surprised. They’ve all seen enough strange and impossible things since then. This is just one more blip on an already strange and impossible timeline.

It’s turned out pretty okay. There are worse things than Steve in his arms while they wait to greet the sun. There’s more worries and stress in the horizon and they both know it, but he can have this now. Steve in his arms and the whole goddamn sky.

“I love you,” Bucky says. It feels good to say it again, face to face, out loud at least once and have Steve hear him.

Steve glances at him in surprise. “What brought this on?”

“Just you,” he says, casual as anything. A hint of a grin plays with the corners of Steve’s mouth. He wants to see it bloom.

Bucky says, “You in my arms and the whole goddamn sky,” and the sun drenches the horizon in a pink and yellow burst of light.

________________________

**Author's Note:**

> This maybe needs to be polished but it really needs to be out of my drafts, so I may be revisiting this at some point. It's been nearly a full year since my last Marvel fic, please be kind :)  
> The ending of this fic was inspired by a tumblr post talking about what if Steve had gone to Vormir alone and I will link it as soon as I find it again  
> But this movie y'all. Goddamn. I have _feelings_ about this
> 
> I'm on tumblr, [come say hi!](http://ivecarvedawoodenheart.tumblr.com)


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